Welcome to the commentary magazine podcast.

Today is the 11th of January 2018. I'm John Pajor. It's the editor of commentary,

the 73-year-old monthly of intellectual analysis, political poverty, and cultural criticism

from a conservative perspective. Join us in commentary magazine.com, where as you know,

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11 times a year with me as always, Abreen Walder, Senior Editor, Hello Abe. Hello, John.

I was trying to speak really quickly like Walter Winchell, and then I'm clearly not Walter

Winchell, and you guys don't even know Walter Winchell is. And Sorobamari, our senior writer,

Hi Sorob. Hi John. So Walter Winchell would have said, good morning. Good evening, Mr.

Mrs. American, all the ships at sea. Let's go to press. So let's go to press. Donald Trump

this week, had a good Tuesday, followed by an awful Thursday, this being Thursday. So Tuesday,

after the Michael Wolf book raised all these questions about his 25th Amendment fitness for office,

he decided to let the press end. His bipartisan negotiation over the deferred status for children

of illegal whatever, McGee's DACA, and he had the Democrats and Republicans in the Rosalrow

room of the White House, and the press was led to stand there for an hour and tape it, and he

and people called him a genius for having done it. Lindsey Graham, who now calls Trump a genius,

just for being able to breathe in and out, apparently called him a genius, even Jeff Flake,

called him a genius, very smooth calling him a genius, he's got good reviews for his performance,

which I think was great on a curve, which we'll get to. And then Thursday morning, this morning,

upended months and months of very difficult Republican spade work to get a deal to reauthorize the

foreign intelligence surveillance advisory court system, or FISA, coming up for a vote today, I believe,

...